Locate Every One of the Gears of War 3 Easter Eggs

Every gamer is familiar with Easter eggs – hidden items in the code of a game that make an appearance only if you know where you're looking. Some of them you'll find just by exploring hidden corners, while others take very specific steps to locate. Doom had you use noclip cheats to find one. Sometimes they're just references. Other times they're, well, gigantic golden chickens.

Gears of War 3 has plenty of Easter eggs. Some are in campaign mode, others are in versus maps. Find them all with our instructions! None of them are going to earn you an achievement, but they'll help you have more fun with the game.

Cole’s Speech from Gears 2 and More

In Act 1, Chapter 3, you'll be fighting your way through a supermarket. At some point inside, you'll come across a "thrashies" cardboard figure wearing a Courgars hat. It has a button that you can press to hear a catchphrase for advertising the Thrashball games, Cougars, and Cole. Press that button enough times, and you'll hear the audio clip of Cole's speech from Gears of War 2.

Next to the stand figure, there's a hat that Cole can wear. There's a second one a little further, in the bed of a truck. In either case, a future cutscene shows Cole losing it.

In the playground that's in the next area, there's a slide. Marcus can slide down it! Simple, but it's a moment of peace in this war-torn world.

In Act 2 Chapter 4, you'll find an area with a bunch of Tickers in cages. Once you've cleared out the enemies, you can find a boarded-up door with a Ticker painted on it. Near it is a light you can activate to view a hidden scene. Fun fact: if you do the same thing in 4-player co-op, the scene is completely different!

Set up a game in Mercy and head to the south-side chapel. You'll find a shelf with a few books in the back. Activate it to cause bells to toll. Sometimes, those bells will cause a picture of Dom and his wife to appear. Shoot it to hear an audio clip of them.

Set up a different game on the Thrashball map and leave the scoreboard intact. Rack up 100 kills (best done in 1v1 versus an idle opponent or cooperating friend) and a song of Cole rapping will play.

The Fabulous Dancing Wretch — Plus Chickens!

This one is a little complicated. Start a match in the Checkout map. Then follow these steps.

Pull the fire alarm near the home goods section. This will cause a box in Electronics to open.

Locate and shoot the box. It will cause a fire extinguisher to appear and another alarm to go off.

Head to the Pharmacy and extinguish the fire. This will trigger a shopping cart outside the doors.

Find and shoot a red hat on the shopping cart.

Find and shoot the hat again, this time on an upper window between the Pharmacy and Checkout areas.

Find the flaming car it has ignited and extinguish it.

Go to the bathroom and shoot a scythe that will be on the ceiling.

Go to electronics and extinguish a flaming microwave.

Look through the doors near where you found the extinguisher. There'll be a dancing wretch!

That's all there is to it! Complicated, but no harder than some of the every-day fights in Horde mode or elsewhere.

In Act 1 Chapter 1 when you're on the deck, there are three large pipes. They're up against walls and aren't very obvious as objects you can use. Find their openings and activate them to have Marcus shout into them. Shout into all three of them and a chicken will pop out. Nothing too unusual…until it morphs into a gigantic golden fire-breathing chicken.

If you do this on four-player co-op on insane, and kill the dangerous chicken, you'll get a Cluckshot. What's a Cluckshot? It's just a boomshot that shoots exploding chickens, that's all. Yes, really.

Cluckshot the Second and More Chickens!

The second place you can earn a Cluckshot is in Act 4. It can only be found on Insane. Start Act 4 Chapter 1 and successfully avoid destroying all the Ash People. This alone is pretty hard. The rest of it is harder and takes the rest of the Act.

When you reach the tower, before talking to Griffin, stop by a gated area. You should find a chicken wearing a pirate hat.

Activate the chicken with the pirate hat.

In Act 4 Chapter 2, find a car on the ledge with ammo in it and watch it fall.

Later in Act 4 Chapter 2, you should follow some railroad tracks and find an ammo box.

Finally in Act 4 Chapter 3, you should find an ammo crate on top of a barrel. Activate it and it'll fall.

If you did it right, a chicken will fly up and drop several Cluckshots for you.

Another chicken-related Easter egg is in Act 4 Chapter 1. After the piano trap and the first spinning gun trap, you should look for a building with a tree growing out of it, with "No hope, no victory" graffiti on it. Look in the nearby window and you should spot a helmet. Shoot it and an explosion will open a door to the building. Inside is an arcade machine you can kick a few times to get working. It's the Sawed-Off Chicken arcade game!

Tiny Details and References

The moment you wake up from your dream at the start of the game, look above Marcus's bed and around his room. He has a copy of the game you're playing.

At the very start of the game, when you meet Jace, he's trying to get a pack of mints out of a vending machine. Specifically, Mustard's Infinity Mints. It's a tiny nod to the Mustard brothers, who made the game Infinity Blade.

By the way, once Jace gives up, you can give it a try yourself with Marcus. He'll kick the machine and grab the candy that falls.

In the same room, there's a Thrashball table. This one, and any other one in the game, will play sound bites from Cole Train's glory days when you use it.

In the final cutscene of the game, when Marcus stabs the queen of the Locust, the knife he uses is the one Dom passes him much earlier. Dom gets his revenge, at long last.

Play a match on the Gridlockmultiplayer map and complete it without destroying any of the ash people. It's hard, but possible. If you manage it, the song "Mad World" will play.

Also on Gridlock, if you climb up to the tower area you can look through some boards and see a fire blocked by some ash people. Shoot the ash people and you'll see a pig roast. Shoot the handle of the spit to turn it, if you want a more even application of heat to your pork.